There are still many passages in Heroides where editors prefer a poor variant or cling to an indefensible text. Some of these I touched on in reviewing Dome's new edition (Berlin, 1971), but shortage of space made it necessary to reserve others for discussion elsewhere. As Dörrie goes astray more often than most of his predecessors, this article may be regarded as a continuation of the review; but I do not discuss any passage where he is alone in his misjudgement.

These notes have been interrupted by the war, and the appearance of Wilamowitz's Platon (Berlin, 1919) makes it desirable to resume them on a slightly different plan. That work has an appendix entitled Textkritik (vol. ii., pp. 323 sqq.), which cannot be passed over in silence, since the writer's reputation and the air of authority he assumes might easily mislead those who have no first-hand knowledge of Platonic textual criticism. I hope to show that most of his conjectures are wrong, and that many of them suggest doubts as to his knowledge of Platonic Greek.

Vollmer, modifying the transposition by Fr. Jacobs of 61–74 after 24, placed these lines after 23; this finally put paid to the reading exordiar astus, which the authority of the Aldine edition had imposed on the early editors, and consequently v. 24 could no longer be taken as concluding the sense of the preceding lines.

Apollonius Dyscolus’ use of ambiguity in grammatical problem-solving has in recent years had the benefit of two scholarly studies. David Blank, in the course of his analysis of the Syntax as a whole (1982), has described the broad functions which Apollonius assigns to ambiguity. Jean Lallot's 1988 paper, ‘Apollonius Dyscole et l'ambigüité linguistique: problemes et solutions’, is devoted exclusively to the treatment of linguistic ambiguity in Apollonius’ work. Yet it is to be feared that the flood of light thrown by these scholars on what had been an unregarded corner of ancient grammar has shown up rather more than Apollonius would have cared to admit, both about the nature, and about the prospects for success, of the enterprise on which he was engaged. At the same time, certain structural features of ancient grammar, at least of the ancient grammar which Apollonius himself constructed, have come into sharper focus: features clear enough with the benefit of hindsight, but glimpsed, it appears, all too dimly by Apollonius himslf. It is now worryingly clear not only that ambiguity was ambiguous for Apollonius, but also that the ambiguity of ambiguity represented a genuine threat to the coherence and value of his work. In this paper I set out to justify both these claims.

There is no established agreement concerning the meaning of πτυχαῖς. The scholiasts give three alternatives: (1) ταῖς ποισεσιν πε διαιρεῖται εἰς στροϕς κα ντιστρΦους κα πῳδς. To the same effect, but more comprehensively, Boeckh interprets: artificiosi flexus numerorum harmoniae saltationis. Similarly Donaldson, Paley, Fennell, and Mezger apply the expression to the artistic turns of poetry; and Gildersleeve's sinuous songs is explained to mean the same thing. Myers translated sounding labyrinths of song, which Sandys modified to sounding bouts of song; but I am not sure that I understand their metaphors. (2) Embroidery of song is apparently a suggestion of the scholiast, since he remarks that πτυχαῖς is suitably (οἰκεως) attached to δαιδαλωσμεν and ποικλλειν—ὥσπερ π κατασκευσματος. But we look in vain for a justification of πτυχα so employed. (3) Then comes the counsel of despair ὕμνων πτυχαῖς: τοῖς ὕμνοις κατ περΦρασιν, for which it is perhaps unnecessary to refer to Rutherford's Annotation, p. 250. I cannot think that anyone is really satisfied with such explanations, although there are no open notes of dissent. There must be some objection which I do not see to the rendering ‘glorious pages of minstrelsy,’ and yet πτυχ is well established in that connexion: Aesch. Suppl. 947 οὐδ' ν ββλων πτυχαῖς κατεσΦραγισμνα where Schuetz rightly finds a reference to charta papyracea )( πνακες. Everyone remembers Gray's ‘Knowledge … her ample page rich with the spoils of time did ne'er unroll.’

During the British occupation of the western extremity of the Gallipoli Peninsula, a brief Greek inscription was discovered by Sergt.-Major R. S. Jones, 136 Company, Royal Engineers. A copy of this he sent to his relatives in Cardiff, and it was by them put before the Western Mail for explanation. Ultimately it came into my hands. I at once wrote asking what had become of the stone, and what was its position—whether above or below ground—when discovered But Sergt.-Major Jones had been killed by a shell on December 27, 1915, eleven days after writing his letter, and only two days after he had been recommended for the Distinguished Conduct Medal. Further information, therefore, was not obtainable; but the inscription appears to have been hitherto unknown. It is a splendid thought that we owe this new historical information to the interest and care of a soldier in the midst of perilous and toilsome duties. His commanding officer wrote that he was ‘my right-hand man ever since the company was formed at Buxton.’

Histories 1.40 is designed to set the scene for Galba's assassination. It begins by bringing the emperor into the crowded Forum, but then it switches to Otho and his followers, dwelling on the horror, not of the act they plan (that is reserved for chapter 41), but of their readiness to commit it. The text is not problematical, but since the point behind the first two sentences is not entirely clear, this has prompted occasional emendation, repeated discussion, and continuing perplexity. The difficulty arises, in good measure, from the assumption that Tacitus is saying much the same as Plutarch (Galb. 26.4–6). As has been remarked more than once, the two authors no doubt drew their material from the common source, but they have in mind different time-frames and different viewpoints. Nor does this end the matter. A skewed perspective on these sentences has also led one scholar to dissect the chapter in a manner purporting to show that Galba's fate, not the Othonians' willingness to bring it about, is Tacitus' main concern.

Thatmox means, or can mean, ‘soon,’ is an assertion which is made often and positively, in works of all sorts, from the ordinary dictionaries, such as Facciolati-Forcellini and Lewis and Short, and valuable writings on lexicography such as Merguet's lexicon to Cicero and Krebs-Schmalz' Antibarbarus, down to the latest little school book at which I have looked. As I had never been able to find a passage in which it clearly and unambiguously had that meaning, in any classical author, I have thought it worth while to examine all the instances in a few good writers, with a view to finding out how they really do use it.

This paper completes a small but long desiderated act of restitution to the Euripidean scholarship of J. J. Scaliger (1540–1609).

In 1694 Joshua Barnes published at Cambridge a complete edition of Euripides; he included either in his text or notes a number of conjectures transcribed from marginalia in a copy of W. Canter's Euripides (Antwerp, 1571) owned successively by Scaliger, his pupil Daniel Heinsius (c. 1580–1655), to whom Scaliger bequeathed the book, and Jan Rutgers (1589–1625). The book passed to the Bodleian Library at Oxford (it has now the Catalogue no. Auct. S. 5. I); in the early nineteenth century P. Elmsley re-examined it for his editions of Medea and Bacchae, and complained that Barnes had not only failed to report all Scaliger's conjectures but frequently disguised the source of those he had noted or even silently appropriated them to himself.

Probably no part of the Iliad has given rise to more discussion than the apparent contradiction between Books 9 and 16. In the former, Agamemnon's embassy offers Achilles the restoration of Briseis and ‘handsome gifts’ in recompense for taking her: in the latter Achilles tells Patroklos to obey his battle-orders exactly, ‘so that you may win me great renown and glory from all the Danaans, and they shall restore the lovely damsel and also give splendid gifts’ —just as though he had not refused precisely these things only the night before

I take this opportunity of correcting a particularly reprehensible error of my own on p. 140 of my edition of these poems. At A.A. 1. 730 read ‘…hoc multri †non ualuisse† putant’; and at 11. 3-4 of the critical apparatus read ‘equidem multi <s> utique’ eqs. In other words, the manuscripts are unanimous in offering multi. I hope that Dr. Lenz will be glad to have this evidence of our common humanity (Maia xiii [1961], 131).

Socrates' account of recollection in the Phaedo has been the subject of much study, but little attention has been paid to the questions whether and how far his arguments address Simmias' claim that he needs to recollect and be reminded that learning is recollection (73b6–10). I shall argue that Socrates reminds Simmias by appealing to Simmias' experience of question-and-answer discussion in order to show him how in these discussions they are regaining forgotten knowledge, but have not yet completed this process.

It is a familiar statement that, when in a primitive Latin word of the scansion the ––≏ first syllable is long by position before a geminated consonant (as in *mammilla, *offella, *farrina), the tendency is to omit one of the consonants and produce the scansion ∪–≏ (as in mamilla, ofella, farina). No such shortening occurs in words of the same scansion when the initial syllable is either naturally long or made long by other groups of consonants.

In Bk. 3 of the Institutio oratoria, Quintilian gives a list of the Greek artium scriptores of the classical epoch (1.8ff.). It contains a controversial entry: ‘…et, quem Palameden Plato appellat, Alcidamas Elaites’ (1.10). The historicity of the rhetorician and sophist from Elaea named Alcidamas, Gorgias' pupil, is of course beyond doubt; scholars disagree only as to the ‘quem Palameden Plato appellat’.

Klaus Alpers has recently recovered from the obscurity of Byzantine lexica the fragments of what appears to be a novel dating from c. A.D. 100, and notable to us, as it was for the Byzantine excerptor, for the elegant verbal borrowings from ancient comedy, always a favourite source of good Attic Greek for the atticists of imperial times. One of these glosses gives occasion to look again at fishing metaphors for erotic business, a subject discussed often enough by scholars, but still perhaps capable of revealing new nuances. These hunting and fishing metaphors are used as one would expect in many non-amatory contexts, but in both love poetry and its allied genres they occur throughout antiquity in such quantity that the metaphorical complexity reaches into very allusive language. Long ago Preston had already pointed out that ‘Figures from hunting, fowling and fishing as parallel to the arts of the meretrix, are very frequent, and are developed at unusual length.’ There was undoubtedly a realistic side to all of this metaphorical hunting. ‘The lover is a fish to be baked, as long he has juice in him’, says the bawd at Plautus, Asinaria 177, and one needs little imagination to realize what plays can be made on such a theme, and indeed were made at all levels throughout antiquity.

Lvcilivs, fr. 965 (Marx):

quaenam uox ex te resonans meo gradu remoram facit ?

Mr. Housman in the first number of the Classical Quarterly (p. 59) refuted and pulverized the attempt of Marx to emend this passage by writing quoia nam. ‘ Ex tecto ’ and ‘ ex aede’ have been suggested; but it is obvious that if ‘ ex aede’ is to be contemplated, emendation may go on —scores of words could be found that would make sense. There is no context. If the passage is to be emended at all, I suggest that Lucilius wrote

quaenam uox EXTVOORERESONANS.